took down ted stevens in a corrupt prosecution in alaska and he has no -- no hesitation to believe thatew bad actors in the bureau or the d.o.j. can take it rogue. i personally think the republicans in the house are overselling the nunez report. they ought to lay back and put it out in two weeks and see what is in it but i would not over-promise and i would continue to say leave special counsel mueller alone. but i'll ask you -- it reminds me so much of spiro agnew in 1973 where a u.s. attorney investigated him for 11 months and then one day he resigns because of tax evasion charges and gives up his office in order to avoid prosecution. i don't think you can prosecute the president of the united states. i don't believe it is constitutional to indict him but i think mueller might be working along those lines. >> let me ask you about attacked on andrew mccabe. because i feel as if -- i feel as if we've crossed a line here that we're never going to get back. does this mean that anybody who works in government suddenly everybody in their life contributes to whether they are biased about som

alaskan leaders like nick beggich, and ted stevens, worked for years to develop the ground-breaking alaska native claim settlement act. too often, however, we have played a passive role. in the past we have accepted the idea that tough negotiating is bad for resource development. we have assumed that addressing the reality of climate change would somehow be imcompatible with building major infrastructure and improving our quality of life. we have conceded that our politics at home should look just like the dysfunctional partisanship we see in washington, d.c. byron and i ran for office because we believed this antiquated system sets us up for failure. sure, it works fine when there's plenty of money to spread around. but when you don't make tough decisions to plan for the future, you leave the destiny up to chance. that's exactly what we saw when the price of oil crashed to $26 a barrel at the end of 2014. fortunately, we meet alaskans who are making tough decisions and taking control of their future. in valdez, they suffered a devastating fire in late 2016. some suggested the owners, mike

against republican politicians in the past by the fbi when some members thought there was abuse, ted stevens being one. so it's not always so smooth with the fbi. but it does put them in an odd position. >> you mentioned that the democratic leader in the house is saying this is a cover-up and so forth. this morning the democratic leader in the senate went on the senate floor and talked about the frustration he said democrats have with the fact that house republicans and presumably, ultimately the white house, will want to release a partisan memo without alongside it the democrats' rebuttal. take a listen. >> the white house and congressional republicans' attacks on mueller and his investigation make you believe it was taking place in a banana republic, turkey, putin's russia, not the united states of america. a different kind of president would want to know how precisely russia meddled in our election and would have severely punished putin for it to discourage him from ever trying it again. >> so, you know, he's kind of trying to put the onus back on the president, but i think the other ques

we would sit around and joe biden and fritz hollings and dell bumpers and ted stevens and strom thurmond and a bunch of us, democrats and republicans alike, we would have lunch and tell and have a great camaraderie. that dining room doesn't exist any longer because people could going there. quite? -- why? we are not here on mondays and then we are gone on fridays because typically they are back home or traveling. as a result, that leaves basically tuesday through thursday. and guess what people are doing then? they are out raising money. part of what it takes to create a functional congress is just for people to be able to sit down and get along with each other. thereen they are out dialing for dollars, when they are spending their lunches with lobbyists that they are supposed it inhibitsting, their ability to go to committee hearings, to hang at with each other, and to forge the bonds necessary for governing in a democracy. will and with -- end with this is your moment. this is our moment. this is what we have to do as americans. democracy is not a statue that you set up and it stays th

. >> one name, ted stevens.erful influential members of the united states congress was brought down by one bad actor. >> rich, did you vote for bob mueller? >> i think the point is that the testimonials for mueller. >> i think i voted for almost every clinton appointment. i give the president great latitude in picking the people surrounding him in the cabinet. >> it is worse than that. it is not just that you were on one side. if in fact the republicans are saying is true that there is malfeasance at the top then you have to proceed in the way that protects the institution. what is happening is a circus inside of a zoo next to a train wreck because you are trying to politicize this whole thing. >> you are saying you don't believe they should release the memo. i do believe there are legitimate reasons for republicans to investigate. >> a responsible way. >> is it disingenuous for republicans to be saying, well, chris wray looked at the memo and didn't have factual changes. reporting from the washington post is ch

you remember ted stevens. >> and i want to come back to this conversation but we have this story. we'll get back to this in a second. now, a cnn analyst, josh, welcome. thanks for joining us. what are the terms being negotiated for this interview? it is a very difficult process. >> sure. so my colleague and i just reported that president trump's lawyers have been in touch with mueller's teem several different issues. they want to question the president on the firing of mike flynn and the firing of jim comey. and the negotiations include whether this part of interview can be in writing, which part will be videotaped but they want to it happen soon. there is an intensifying focus on the obstruction part of probe and the president's actions with regard to the firings. they've begun asking witnesses about the repeated efforts tow oust jeff sessions as attorney general. there were multiple efforts to get him to resign. a republican smear campaign. a lot of pressure from president trump's allies. and mueller's team is questioning, why is that so? >> how close might mueller be to sitting

incidentally, the late, great senator ted stevens from alaska, whose desk i occupy here on the floor, also flew the hump with the army air corps during world war ii, and i know he was a friend of george's. so after the war, george and peggy and their two children made their way to alaska to forge a new life. eventually that life found shape in a building that george built by hand in downtown anchorage, the lucky wishbone. its doors opened on november 30, 1955, in a kind of living room for the community where you could also get great food was born in anchorage. mr. president, as you know, most walls don't talk, but the walls of the lucky wishbone do talk. they are filled of pictures of chorage and its history. it tells the story of a hard scrabble territory, alaska, that fought for self-determination and gained citizenship and statehood in 1959. they tell the story of a town, anchorage, rebuilt after being hit by the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in north america, 9.2 on richter scale. the walls tell the story of a state brimming with excitment when producedo bay -- prudo bay

in 2005, ted stevens, a republican, gave us the infamous bridge to nowhere that alerted americans to this problem. in 2009, democrat senator hillary clinton parlayed her standing with the legislative leadership to secure dollars to new york that came in in the budget report, not the text of the bill. not a single hearing, not a single vote, not a single witness statement about the $2.3 billion hillary clinton asked for for new york. that's as bad as what the department of transportation was doing. if this effort is is to see congress direct more federal spending and become simply a vehicle to restore the bad old days of congressional earmarks, then i'll suggest that this committee will have succeeded only in further eroding the trust and confidence of the american people. i don't know how much lower your job approval can go but i suspect if we return to the bad old days of earmarks, we will merely be plumbing those depths. the american people expect and deserve better. mr. chairman, regardless of the substance of this policy proposal, it will fail if you and your colleagues in the ho

and the late senator ted stevens wasn't doing that with any thought in mind, i don't think, of anything that was harmful, those 3,000 plus people that lived on that other side. it was a bridge to somewhere. and in many instances, and i use bridges as afo for-example. when i came here there were 14,000 bridges in this country in need of repair and today, the numbers are way in excess of that amount. as a matter of fact, it's more than 100,000. and that said, i would like to see an analysis on how many bridges were built as a result of earmarks versus just leaving it to the vagares of democracy. and you pointed out that sometimes when we get the earmarks we don't have them properly vetted and so, considerations of the local communities are not undertaken properly and the earmark is there, but then you still have permitting and environmental considerations and i thought that was particularly helpful. both your presentations are enlightening and i parallel when i'm listening to you, i'm listening to my department of transportation and i know you all know each other, but i would be interesti